


The Last Son of Krypton

by bluepanes



Category: DCU, Superman - All Media Types, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Also Scott is gonna be green lantern lmao im sorry, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Derek Hale as Superman, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Peter Hale as Lex Luthor, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Stiles Stilinski as Lois Lane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 02:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8186744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluepanes/pseuds/bluepanes
Summary: Superman AUDerek Hale works at the Daily Planet alongside his fellow intrepid reporter, Stiles Stilinski. That is, when he's not flying around Metropolis saving people's lives or trying to stop Peter from killing him.This will mostly be fluff, maybe with a little angst too. Also, pretty much everyone will be a part of the Justice League, just try and stop me .





	1. Chapter 1

“Stilinski! Hale!” Bobby Finstock bellowed from his office doorway. “Superman just made an appearance in down town Metropolis and I want your asses there covering the story _NOW!_ ”

Stiles Stilinski’s fingers teetered at the edge of his keyboard. He looked across at Hale’s empty desk and rolled his eyes. Typical.

“And take Lahey with you!”

Finstock slammed his door.

There was a clatter and a shout from somewhere behind Stiles, and a gush of papers blew into the air.

“Jesus, Hale!” Lombard grasped after the falling papers. “Watch where you’re going next time, will you?”

Derek Hale’s mouth opened and closed, a string of stuttered apologies pouring from him. Hale bent down on his knees to gather up the papers, pushing up his thick, black framed glasses up his nose with one hand. Shutting down the story he’d been working on, Stiles slipped his messenger bag over his shoulder and walked over to Hale who had finally returned to standing on two feet. He placed a hand against Hale’s back and ushered him through the Daily Planet’s bronze elevator doors in a hurry.

“ _God_ , Finstock better have found us a good one this time,” Stiles reached past Derek to light up the elevator buttons, “I was working on the story of the decade. And Hale, I’m talking _Pulitzer Prize_ winning material here.”

The elevator doors crawled to a close and Stiles continued mashing at the buttons until they sealed together with a dull judder.

“Though you know me, I’d never pass up on an opportunity to see Supes.” He turned to face Derek and squinted, “I _still_ can’t believe you’ve never seen him before. How is that even possible? The guy spends more time in Metropolis than the Caped Crusader spends in the shadows.”

Hale squirmed and readjusted his glasses.

“Oh well, it’s alright. I mean, I’ve seen Lahey’s photos –”

Stiles tsked.

“Derek. The man was _chiselled by the Gods_. Not even Lahey’s good enough to capture that body. I don’t think there’s even a _lens on this earth that could_ –”

The elevator doors opened with a ding and Derek fled the elevator, blushing profusely.

“Oh right, I keep forgetting, you grew up on a farm,” Stiles called after Hale with a grin.

Rolling his eyes, Derek sped across the Daily Planet’s vast, marble lobby. He pushed against the immense glass, revolving doors and walked out into the ice flecked air. Stiles, however, stayed a few paces behind, admiring the man as the tail of his thick flannel shirt flapped behind him with the wind, and as he wove his arms in a lost effort to signal the yellow taxi cabs hurtling by.

 

Stiles was flirting with Detective Strauss again, and it took every ounce of Derek’s will power to not eaves drop on their conversation. A few feet away, Derek nodded along to a brown haired paramedic who was politely explaining to him the scene that had unfolded a half-hour earlier. There had been an apartment fire that had nearly taken out the entire building and its tenants, she told him. Not that Derek needed to know, he’d been there after all, but it didn’t hurt to get a quote. Behind him, Derek could feel the ripples in the air as Stiles brushed a hand over Strauss’s arm and leaned over the yellow police tape to chuckle into the detective’s ear, probably trying to get a quote too.

“And no one was hurt?” Derek said, “I, uh, heard reports of some pretty bad smoke inhalation. A kid, is she alright?”

The paramedic talked as she cleaned a cut above an elderly man’s eyebrow. He sat on top of a stretcher, his eyes squeezed closed while she dabbed at the red wound.

“Nothing that a little fresh air can’t cure.” The woman looked up at the reporter. “It would have been a lot worse if Superman hadn’t shown up. He was the real hero today.”

The old man took laboured breaths as the paramedic applied butterfly wound closures to the gash above his eye. Derek paused.

“I don’t know. Superman can pull someone from a burning building, but he can’t help people the same way someone like you can.”

“You’re right,” she straightened and pulled the powdery green rubber gloves from her fingers, “I could never inspire people like he can.” Smiling at the reporter, she said, “When are you guys going to get an interview with him, anyway? Superman’s been around for a couple of years, you think that we’d at least have heard a word from him by now.”

“Oh, _believe_ me, we’ve all been trying,” said Stiles, materializing behind Derek. Stiles grinned at the paramedic who gasped and pulled him into a smushed hug. Derek took a step back and raised an eyebrow at Stiles in ‘what is happening?!’ speak.

“Hey, Mrs. McCall,” Stiles spoke through a wall of her curly brown hair, mouthing back an explanation that Derek wouldn’t have been able to understand even if he had Batman’s ability to lip read.

“Stiles! How’s your dad?”

What was Stiles trying to say? Pots tom?

“Oh you know the General, he’s fi –”

“Why don’t you come around more?”

Derek raised both eyebrows and Stiles tried mouthing something again. _Hots bomb?!_

“It’s only been a couple of weeks– ”

Mrs. McCall detached herself and gave Stiles her deadeye glare.

“Aaaand I will be there this weekend. With Scotty. I’ll drag him along too. All the way from Coast city. He’ll be there. We’ll be there.”

Tsking, she hugged him goodbye and returned to her patient. Derek, with both dark eyebrows still raised, shook his head in a way that somehow managed to offer even more puzzlement.

“ _Scott’s mom_ ,” he groaned, “I was saying Scott’s mom.”

Right, that made more sense. Derek could not begin to count the amount of times he’d listened to Stiles ramble on about his best friend, the brown eyed, crooked jawed, asthmatic test pilot who worked for Ferris Air. For someone that Derek hadn’t even met, that was already too sufficient of a description to have of the guy.

Stiles smirked.

“By the way, Strauss gave me the scoop. I told you, they don’t call me silver-tongued for nothing.”

Derek rolled his eyes.

“No one calls you silver-tongued.”

“Yeah, but it helps when the Detective wants to get into your pants,” said Stiles, grinning like a twelve year old boy meeting Wonder Woman for the first time, whipping a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Strauss gave me his number, I _told_ you he liked me. You owe me five bucks.”

“He seems nice, you should call him,” Derek said, a waver in his tone, but the honest to God truth was that Derek hoped that the detective’s cell had been disconnected. He hoped that the writing on the paper was illegible. Better yet, he hoped that Strauss was a clone, manufactured by some division of LexCorp that would attack at any moment, because maybe then Derek would have the courage to reveal his identity to Stiles, and then they could stop dancing around each other. Maybe then Stiles would look at him not just as Derek Hale or as Superman, but as the person there, in between. Because the truth was that Derek Hale had been in love with Stiles Stilinski ever since Finstock had bumped their desks together in the bullpen. And it was selfish for Derek Hale, the last son of Krypton, to want to be with him.

Frowning at Derek, Stiles noisily crumpled the piece of paper in his fist and shoved it in his pocket.

“He’s not really my type.”

Stiles’s phone chimed.

“Would ya look at that, Hale,” Stiles waved his phone at him, “We forgot Lahey again. How does this keep happening?”

Derek’s eyes widened and Stiles picked up the phone.

_“Lahey! I’m sorry, it was an accident, I swear…”_

Derek snorted and turned away, thinking about what to put in their article for Finstock when on Metropolis’s flat horizon, out there in this distance, he thought he saw a red glimmer. A lick of a flame, a blur of blue and gold. A millisecond later, the faint sound of a crash reached him.

“Stiles, you wait here for Lahey. I’ve got to find a bathroom, I’m not feeling so well.”

Derek patted his stomach and Stiles grimaced. If Derek hadn’t been so accustomed to letting his pride as Derek Hale take the bullet in order to save lives as Superman, he would have tried to bury his head in a concrete wall to hide the embarrassment.

“Uh, yeah, you go,” Stiles put his hand over his cell phone speaker, “Feel better, big guy.”

Jogging away from the scene, Derek loosened the knot of his tie.

 

A black and red disc soared through the air towards a man dressed in blue and gold, but to Superman, it all but stood still. Swooping down from the skies, Superman tackled the man in blue and gold around the middle and pushed him out of the way, just as the disc speed past them and exploded upon contact with a building wall.

“Jackson Whittemore,” Derek said, to the blonde man sporting the blue and gold, “what brings you to my city?”

“Come on, it’s Booster Gold when I’m wearing the suit.”

A whiz rounded from the left and the two ducked to the ground. Derek focused his eyes on the smattering of park trees where the assailant who had hurled the exploding discs was lurking. _There_. A tall dark shape. The Black Beetle.

“Did you say Buster?”

“Booster Go – you know what it is. Shut up, Derek,” said Jackson, and Derek grinned.

Jackson Whittemore was a disgraced athlete from the twenty-fifth century who had travelled back in time to reap the benefits of being a superhero. After he’d been caught cheating, he’d stolen an artificial intelligence called Skeets, as well as a flight / time travel ring from the Legion of Superheroes to become a superhero in the twenty-first century. With Skeets’s database of when and where attacks would occur, Booster Gold always appeared at just the right time to stop a mugging _and_ get his photo taken. Most of the Justice League couldn’t stand the guy’s blatant ego, not to mention the pay checks he pulled in from product endorsement, but underneath it all Derek saw something different. Somewhere, deep down, there was a guy trying to help others.

Derek pondered for another split second.

It was deep, deep down, though.

Another disc was hurled towards them from the right, this time clipping Derek on the shoulder. The explosion barely dented his balance however the blade on its edges sliced through the tight fabric of his suit, making its way deep into the skin. He ripped the remnants of shrapnel from his bicep and Jackson smirked.

“What, the Kryptonian’s never had a scratch before?”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows and cupped a hand around his bleeding bicep.

“Not that many blades can cut me.”

Someone shrieked and Derek dropped his arm. _Right, pedestrians_.

Taking flight, Derek became a red-blue blur, a bullet blasting through the air. He began clearing the perimeter, plucking people from the vicinity while Booster Gold faced off against Black Beetle. In Derek’s periphery he saw Stiles hurtling out of a cab and towards the showdown while Lahey slotted a pile of bills through the driver’s window in a fluster before following suit. Derek groaned as a stray disc whistled towards Stiles, and the sound barrier broke as Derek dove towards him.

Pushing Stiles to the ground, Derek faced the object head on, absorbing its blast as it detonated into his chest. Through clearing smoke, Derek watched Booster’s fist make contact with Beetle’s face in a sickening _crack_ , knocking the scarab out and onto the ground. Derek slowly turned around and shards of glass and concrete dust fell from the creases of his cape with a quiet _plink._  He bent down, offering a hand to Stiles, who arms were still raised defensively from the blast.

“Are you alright?” Derek asked, deepening his voice. He’d only been this close to Stiles as Superman maybe once or twice before, but never for more than a moment.

“Y- Yeah, thanks,” said Stiles, taking his outstretched hand and studying Derek’s face. Derek’s pulse quickened, worried for a moment that Stiles had recognized him, until the younger man began rummaging in his trouser pockets.

Behind them, Derek could hear the _click click click_ of Jackson posing for Lahey’s camera.

“Uh, I’m a reporter,” Stiles said, pressing his card into Derek’s hand. “You know, if you’re interested, I’d love to interview you some time.”

Setting his jaw in an effort to hide a smile, Derek looked down, then up at Stiles again. Backing a few feet away, Derek read off the card as though he were reading his name for the first time and said, “See you around, Mr. Stilinski,” and shot up into the sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all the kind words, it really means a lot to know you liked it! Also, sorry it took so long to update but I was right in the middle of exams, but hopefully now that that's over I'll be able to update more regularly :)

“Oh my God – stop moving –”

“Stiles, you’re the one who keeps moving –”

“Hale! Don’t act like this is on me, you’re secretly ripped under that poor choice of a shirt and we both know it. Just, hold me up.”

Derek groaned and lifted Stiles a little higher.

It was the middle of the night and the two bickered in the darkness, Derek leaning against LexCorp’s southern gate, and Stiles balanced precariously on his shoulders.

“We shouldn’t be here, this is dangerous.”

For the past couple of days, Stiles had seemed distracted – only paying half attention to any one conversation and constantly checking his phone – so Derek had jumped at Stiles’s decision to casually swing by the heavily guarded LexCorp for a poke around. The last thing he needed was for Stiles, in all his clumsy glory, to accidentally get himself on Peter’s bad side.

A stone of nausea settled in Derek’s stomach at the very thought.

Ever since Kate’s death, Derek had been unerringly cautious around Peter, especially in trying to keep Stiles away from him. When it came to investigative journalism, Stiles had a habit of diving in for a penny and coming out with the goldmine.

“You’re the one who wanted to come with me. Besides, it’s for the greater good,” Stiles said, his chin pointed in the air, struggling to see over the concrete gate. “Peter’s up to something again, the slimy bastard. Now lift me up a little higher.”

Sighing, Derek scanned the dim street again. With no one in sight and Stiles decidedly preoccupied, Derek hovered a couple of inches off of the ground.

“Yes! Perfect, okay,” Stiles called down, “There are all these massive trucks in the loading bay. And about five different guys pulling crates out of the trucks. I can’t see what they’re unloading though...”

Neither could Derek. He’d flown by earlier in the night and hit the literal lead wall. Peter had a funny habit of knowing whenever Derek was close by, and this time he must have lined the industrial crates with lead to block out Derek’s vision. Though he might have been oblivious to the crate’s contents, Derek would bet his life that it was some kind of weapons stock for Peter’s war against the Argents. After all these years, it was all his uncle knew: power and revenge.

Stiles shifted above him, hooking one arm over the wall as though he were going to hop the fence entirely.

“I’m just going to take a closer–”

“Hey, Charlie,” one of the workers called out, “Who the fuck is that?”

Stiles and Derek froze as the flood lights turned on with a loud shutter.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Stiles scrambled, trying to duck down behind the wall again, only to lose his balance entirely. Slipping from Derek’s shoulders, Stiles plummeted towards the pavement but was met with a soft thump in the place of a sickening splat. Opening one eye, Stiles squinted up at Derek, who had caught him.

“T- talk about sweeping a guy off his feet,” Stiles exhaled, still bunching Derek’s shirt tightly from the fall.

Rolling his eyes, Derek set Stiles upright on the pavement and tried to calm the spike of adrenaline that holding Stiles had brought about.

“I told you this was dangerous,” Derek said quickly, readjusting his shirt and tie.

The sound of shouts from behind the wall made Stiles bite down on his next quip. Tagging Derek’s arm, Stiles pulled him quickly down the dim street. Under the yellow city lights, the two journalists made it a few blocks downtown before Derek and Stiles doubled over, both of their chests heaving. Sometimes Derek wondered why he even pulled the clumsy human act around Stiles – looking back over his shoulder, Derek didn’t even need to hear Stiles heartbeat to know the younger journalist was two beats away from a myocardial infarction. He removed his glasses and turned around as if to wipe steam from the lenses, then fixed them back on.

“Alright – why are you going after Peter Luthor?”

“Nuh uh,” Stiles shook his head, still breathing heavily from the run, “I can’t Der-bear, I’ve already talked it over with Finstock and we’re keeping this one on the down low.”

Derek’s chest tightened. In a way, it didn’t matter what it was because this was it. This was the penny. And Stiles was going for it.

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“I know, but I’m curious to see how much journalistic integrity I actually have left. I give it a week before I cave, two weeks tops.”

Stiles started walking down the street again but Derek caught hold of his arm, lowering his voice.

“I’m serious, Stiles, you don’t know what you’re getting in to. You don’t know what Peter’s capable of.”

“And you do?” Stiles raised an eyebrow.

“No, I just –” Derek was squirming again, “You need to be careful.”

Realising what he was still holding on to, Derek dropped Stiles’s arm faster than he’d dropped a batarang the first time Chris Argent found him snooping in the batcave. Stiles looked up at him, his brow furrowed.

“You know I’m always careful, Der.”

It was unspoken, the look on Stiles’s face: What aren’t you telling me? The younger man ever so slightly frowned, his brow creasing in a minute movement that most humans probably never realised they made, and Derek wondered if it was accumulation of moments like this that made Stiles not want to trust him with this story. The pair had been working alongside each other for nearly two years, and it had taken Derek all of twenty-five minutes of watching Stiles grill the mayor of Metropolis city on corruption allegations for Derek to know that Stiles was a human lie detector. Having to lie to Stiles was the only part of being Superman that didn’t agree with Derek. The feeling of unease stuck around in his gut like food poisoning. Only the underlying fear of what Peter might do if he ever found out who he truly was and who he cared about kept Derek from telling him right then and there.

The younger journalist shook his head and the pair resumed their walk down the road towards the yellow taxi cab they had hired to ferry them about the city at night. Stiles rummaged around in his pockets and pulled out his phone. He sighed and shoved it back into his pocket.

“I’m waiting for a call,” Stiles said in response to Derek’s unvoiced question.

“I thought you said the Detective wasn’t your type,” Derek teased.

Stiles balked.

“No, I’ll have you know,” he sniffed, squeezing past a man and a woman who had taken up half the sidewalk in a leisurely evening stroll, “I’m waiting for Superman.”

Derek stopped dead in his tracks.

“Su- You’re waiting for Superman to call you?”

“I gave him my card two days ago when he saved my ass from Black Beetle but he hasn’t called.” Stiles scrubbed a hand through his hair and loudly yawned.

Derek paused. “Maybe he’s just not ready for an interview.”

“As much as I want to be the first person to land an interview with the Big Blue Boy Scout, I think I just want to properly thank him.”

Derek looked across at Stiles while they walked down the city sidewalk, neon signs from late-night Chinese takeout joints flickering at them as they walked by.

“Didn’t you already thank him for saving you?”

“Yeah but... It’s more than that.” Approaching the waiting taxi, Stiles tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. “After my mom died and I started working as a foreign correspondent for the Planet, reporting on stories that were continually about the worst aspects of humanity just took its toll on me, you know? I mean, it wasn’t just the constant reminder that people are capable of complete and utter inhumanity, but it was also all the accidents and disasters that are just outside of our control. It makes you feel so... helpless.”

He walked over to the yellow cab and wrapped his knuckles on the window. The clatter of his knuckles against glass struck out stark against this muted area of the city, startling the sleeping driver.

Stiles opened the door and spoke over his shoulder to Derek. “But it’s nice knowing someone like him is out there to stop it, to help people without asking for anything in return.”

Listening to Stiles shuffle into the cab, Derek looked down to his shoes and smiled to himself.

Calling out through the window, Stiles said, “You coming?”

“Yeah, right,” he replied and pushed his glasses further up his nose before following his partner into the cab.

 

   
After waving the cab goodbye and watching it drive away from his apartment, Derek stepped into the side alley to change. It had been a long day and he was tired, but a nagging in his gut told him if he didn’t say something to Peter now he wouldn’t sleep anyway. Stowing his clothes and glasses behind a dumpster, Derek looked back down the alley way, then shot up into the sky.

By the time he’d landed on the LexCorp roof and found his way down to Peter’s office, Peter would have been notified of his arrival. Derek kept his eyes trained ahead of him, ignoring the quiet mechanical grinding of the security cameras following him down the corridors. Stepping into the dark office, he watched Peter carefully close his laptop and settle back into his desk chair.

“Kal-El,” Peter said, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Ignoring his uncle, Derek gave the room a millisecond sweep with his x-ray vision, but nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

“Please, make yourself at home.” Peter reached out for a tumbler and the decanter of bourbon on his desk and poured himself a drink. “I can’t wait to hear whatever self-righteous monologue you have in store for this evening.”

Yellow light from the city beamed in through the tall windows in the office, but cordoned off in shadow, Derek remained a silhouette examining Peter at his blue glass desk.

“I don’t know what you’re planning, but this is the last time I’ll warn you. Let this go.”

In his left hand, Peter held the crystal glass filled a quarter-inch with the malt brown liquor. Glaring at him through the dark, Peter traced the glass’s rim with his index finger.

“You really are the spitting image of Talia. What with the tall, dark and menacing. She was always so stern, even when we were children.” He sighed. “We didn’t get along much either.”

Stiffening at the mention of his mother, Derek thought of what Stiles had said not even a half hour earlier about Superman being able to take away that feeling of helplessness. It was ironic – in the moments like these, he didn’t feel like that same icon, like the Man of Steel. Here in Peter’s office he was vulnerable, just a boy talking to his uncle in the shadow of their entire world. Their world and their families who had been destroyed.

Straightening and feeling the soft skim of his cape against his side, Derek stepped towards Peter.

“Kate’s gone. Let this end, Peter.”

Rising from his desk, Peter carefully placed the crystal tumbler atop his glass desk with a quiet clink. He drew his hands into his trouser pockets and looked over at Derek.

“This ends when every last Argent is dead,” he said, his voice steady, “so this is the last time I’ll warn you, Kal-El. Get in my way, and I will tear you and your little friends into pieces, just like I did to Katherine Argent.”


End file.
